Thursday, July 24, 2008

Twenty years ago, the minicomputer cluster along Route 128, the beltway round Boston, rivaled Silicon Valley as symbol of entrepreneurship, innovation and cutting-edge computer technology. Today most firms like DEC, Prime, Apollo, Wang and data General has disappeared. But the heritage from the minicomputer era still makes its mark on the local economy and some of the product lines continue to sell for billions of dollars.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Monday, July 14, 2008

Citizen media start-up AllVoices, a global community that lets users contribute news and commentary by cell phone or online, moves from beta to the public newsroom on Thursday.

"My goal is to create the first true people's media company, where 6 billion people on the planet can share their news from wherever they are," said Amra Tareen, founder of San Francisco-based AllVoices.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Naples, Fla.-based rubber recycler Lehigh Technologies has finished a series E round of funding, squeezing out another $34.5 million and adding Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to its list of investors.

The company started producing rubber powder out of recycled tires a year ago. Lehigh's process involves freezing old tires with liquid nitrogen, then putting the frozen tires through a mill in high velocity, turning the rubber into a fine powder. That powder can be used in paints, shoes, plastics, carpets, and tires.

Through this process, Lehigh says it can make rubber powder for half the price of synthetic rubber.